International adventures-an overview starting in Brazil

In the past month I’ve had the pleasure and honor of journeying to three international destinations: Brazil, Canada, and Spain. This explains in part why I have not been blogging as much but I will be doing more. Thank you to Danny and others for keeping up the pace. All my global wanderings over the last 30 years offer lessons, but this past month has been particularly edifying. In the next three blogs I will detail the adventures and the implications for me and for what I believe is the increasingly troubled Alzheimer’s field.

Lilian Alicke has been a friend and advisor to me and a leader in Brazil and the world of A.D. When she invited me to a conference in Belem at the mouth of the Amazon River, I could not resist for several reasons. Lillian has been a promoter of the ideas in The Myth even as a board member of Alzheimer’s Disease International. Brazil is a beautiful country and I had wanted to return to share experiences in our intergenerational school. I had written the forward to the Textbook of Geriatric Neuropsychiatry published in Portuguese some ten years ago. In this I had mentioned that Brazil was a country with vast resources, warm and vibrant people, and a dynamic future. I had suggested that in the next edition of this textbook there should be a chapter on ethics. As a result of this visit to Brazil the editor Paulo Caramelli asked me to write such a chapter for the next planned edition. My 2000 forward stressed the need to take a broad perspective on global bioethics as we work to balance economic development and sustainability of the Amazon River and its rich ecology, while at the same time caring for the elderly around the world with brain challenges. I had always wanted to visit the Brazilian jungle and this was “our” chance.

The “our” includes my daughter Erin Whitehouse who is currently serving as the nurse of the intergenerational school as she finished up her master’s in public health on school-based health centers and socioecological models of health. Erin speaks Portuguese as a result of working in Mozambique. So Erin and I flew through Brasilia to Manaus (about a 1000 miles up river from the mouth) to spend a week hundred kilometers further south at Juma Lodge. We learn much about the Amazon, its ecosystem, and its peoples. The Amazonian watershed includes approximately 20% of the world’s freshwater, a number percentage similar to our own Great Lakes in our region of the United States. Global warming has begun to affect the Amazon region as both floods and droughts have been experienced recently. One highlight was meeting a guide whose mother was an indigenous person and hearing his stories of being healed as a baby by a shaman. I was reading a book on the importance of narrative in the shamanism which blends individual and community health as well as educational and medical practices. It is ironic that this is what we’re trying to do in our intergenerational health and wellness practice in our school in Cleveland. I think I found my inner shaman.

Erin’s presentation about the school was very well received. My presentation which included a discussion of the latest confusion about guidelines from Europe and the United States about Alzheimer’s seem to resonate as well. We enjoyed very much our time with our Brazilian hosts and hope to come back for the next ABRAz (Brazilian Alzheimer Association) conference in two years in São Paulo.

Comments

Peter, I’m glad you and Erin enjoyed your visit and hope to see you next time in São Paulo. Some day hopefully the intergenerational school idea will be put into practice here.
Best wishes from Belo Horizonte, Brazil.